"He no doubt told you that he laid a charge of secrecy upon me."
"And you did nothing to dissuade him, nothing to stop him from a madly suicidal step. You, who pretend to pose as a disinterested friend of Bulgaria devoted to him and to me! And do you think, knowing me as you do, for all your flippant lip-service to the jargon of conventionality, that I will let this thing be? Do you think that I am so powerless a fool that I cannot stop it? Oh, I am a mad woman when I think of it!" she cried desperately. "It can be stopped and must be—do you hear? must; and you must help me."
"I cannot see how I can help you."
She had risen from her chair and was pacing the room in her anger and now came close to me, and in a tone of concentrated energy and fierceness said:
"The death of that woman Christina will stop it; and in that you can help, aye, and you shall help me." Her face was ablaze with rage and hate as she uttered the Princess's name.
"The Prince himself is opposed to any more blood-*shed," I said bluntly. "The sentiment does him infinite honour, and I share it."
"You dare to say that to me? To set me at defiance? To go back upon the pledge you gave? Are you a coward, Count Benderoff?"
"I will be no party to the assassination of the Princess," I answered sternly.
"You defy me?" And, laying her hand on my arm, she stared into my eyes for some moments in silence, and then, her lips curling and her face so hard and set that the nostrils dilated with the vehemence of her anger, she added: "I could kill you."
Clearly it was to be open war between us, and I pre-
